Orchestre Symphonique De Montreal, Kent Nagano - Danse Macabre (2016)

Kent Nagano's 2016 collection of supernatural-themed tone poems brings together three orchestral classics and three less frequently programmed pieces. Paul Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Modest Mussorgsky's A Night on the Bare Mountain are famous from their use in Walt Disney's Fantasia, and Camille Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre has become standard fare for Hallowe'en concerts. However, Antonín Dvorák's The Noonday Witch, Mily Balakirev's Tamara, and Charles Ives' Hallowe'en are likely unfamiliar to most listeners. The Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal delivers vivid live renditions that capture the spookiness and fun of these eerie compositions, and are at their best in the swirling demonic passages of A Night on the Bare Mountain and Danse Macabre. The stories of Tamara, an evil queen who lures men to their doom, and the Noonday Witch, who is summoned to punish a misbehaving child, are easy to follow with the descriptions in the booklet, and Ives' more general depiction of children dancing around a bonfire is a lively encore that closes the album with a bang.